September 8 (SeeNews) - Romanian construction and development company Bog'Art has won a tender to build IKEA's second store in the country, with construction works to start in October, the Romanian unit of the Swedish furniture retailer said.
To be located in the eastern part of Bucharest, the 37,000 sq m store will be opened by the end of 2018, IKEA Romania said in a press release on Thursday.
At present, IKEA has one store in Romania, in northern Bucharest.
The recruitment of the 300 employees who will work in the new store is scheduled to begin about one year before opening the unit.
IKEA unveiled its plan to open a second store in Romania - an 80 million euro ($88 million) investment project, in November 2016. It also said at the time it planned to open three more stores in Romania by 2020 - in Timisoara, Brasov and Cluj-Napoca.
IKEA's sales in Romania grew by 21.2% year-on-year to 514 million lei ($125.5 million/114 million euro) in financial year 2016 ended August 31, value added tax excluded, mainly due to an increase of online orders.
IKEA's first Romanian store was opened in March 2007 under a franchise and became part of the IKEA Group in March 2010. The company operates more than 330 stores in 40 countries and has close to 154,000 employees worldwide.
(1 euro= 4.5980 Romanian lei)